AMD Demonstrates Quad-core Opteron

By John Martellaro

Nov 29th, 2006 3:00 PM EST

AMD has demonstrated "Barcelona," a quad-core Opteron 800 CPU,
according to a
report from Computerworld.

The demonstration was given to analysts in Berkeley, CA, and AMD said that the new
processor is designed for high-performance workstations and servers. It
is scheduled to ship in Q2 2007. AMD
also said it believes its processor is superior to Intel designs.

In September, Hector Ruiz, the CEO of AMD, stated that Apple
would eventually become a customer of AMD CPUs. Mr. Ruiz pointed
out that "Adding Advanced Micro as a supplier will be simple for
Apple because the company has already adapted Macintosh operating
system software to work on Intel chips, which use the same instruction set as Advanced Micro."

The Computerworld article points out that there is a basic design
difference between the Intelis quad-core Woodcrest and AMDis design. "Analysts
are divided on the impact of that distinction, and say that they
cannot measure the difference until they compare benchmarks."